


Drown in Your Self-Interest

by Misty_Reeyus



Series: True Colors [2]
Category: Magic Kaito
Genre: Emotional Baggage, Emotional Trainwreck, M/M, Underage Drinking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unresolved Romantic Tension, hints of polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 23:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8642371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misty_Reeyus/pseuds/Misty_Reeyus
Summary: Friends are probably supposed to stop friends from drinking themselves comatose.





	

**Author's Note:**

> happens almost directly after [300 Yen For Your Thoughts](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7744909); you might want to read that first.

“Koizumi-san found Aoko-kun.”

“Yeah, I got Akako’s text too, thanks.”

Saguru frowns, at both the flippant answer and the sight before him. Kuroba sits at the counter of the Blue Parrot, bottle of wine and matching drinking glass in hand. He must have broken in here—the bar is closed and its owner is nowhere in sight, and anyways, Saguru doubts Konosuke would ever let his young master do something like this.

“Why are you here, then?” Saguru had suspected he might find Kuroba here when he couldn’t find him at his house, but he hadn’t quite been expecting this. “I thought you’d be relieved, not turning to the bottle.”

“I _am_ relieved. S’ _why_ I’m turnin’ to the bottle,” Kuroba mumbles. “Aoko’s safe. Or as safe as anyone could be stayin’ with Akako. So I dun’ need my brain anymore, and I’m free to make it _rot_.”

Saguru doesn’t even know where to begin arguing with that logic, so he doesn’t bother.

Kuroba takes another swig of his glass and holds the bottle out in invitation. “Wanna join in?”

“I…” Honestly, after the hectic past few days Saguru’s had—what with worrying about the runaway Aoko and trying to figure out where to find her and checking up on the understandably distraught father, all while having to feign ignorance of the reason she ran away in the first place—he probably _could_ go for a drink.

But he’s not in Britain right now, and this isn’t Mum’s home where a glass of wine with dinner might as well be mandatory, so Saguru shakes his head. “No. Not when I’m still underage in this country.”

Kaito scoffs. “Ever the pedant, I see.”

Saguru frowns. He’s heard that his whole life, and he’s never given anyone any reason to doubt it. Not until Kaitou Kid anyway. Saguru was doomed from the very moment he agreed to work in the same group as Kuroba—he joined the Capture Brigade with every intention of finding proof of Kid’s true identity, but somehow, he instead came out of it with an infuriating sort of friend.

And friends are probably supposed to stop friends from drinking themselves comatose.

“ _You_ aren’t of drinking age either, Kuroba-kun.” Saguru snatches the bottle up, ignoring the way Kuroba whines in protest, and scrunches his nose when he glances at the label. “You didn’t even get the good wine.”

“Well excuuuuuuse me if I didn’t wanna cough up the cash for _fancy_ glorified grape juice.”

Saguru blinks, and the next thing he knows, the bottle is back in Kuroba’s hands and he’s refilling his glass. Apparently, the alcohol has not yet dulled Kuroba’s senses to the point of hindering his magician’s dexterity.

Saguru sighs. “You broke into a closed bar to engage in illegal underage drinking, and you’re still concerned about paying?”

“They’re Jii-chan’s wares, ‘course I gotta compensate. I dun’ steal _everything_.”

“…So you actually admit to stealing _some_ things?” Saguru takes the seat next to Kuroba, meeting his gaze at eye level. “Wow, you really must be drunk. You’re never this this loose-lipped around me.”

“Yeah, well…what’s the point now?” Kuroba gives a short laugh, empty and humorless. “We both know you already know everything, and now even Aoko knows too—”

Approximately 1.7 seconds after Kuroba utters her name, he visibly freezes up, and 2.5 seconds after that, his expression sours. He slumps onto the counter, head hitting the tabletop with a rather painful-sounding clang as his newly filled glass rests an inch from his ear, apparently forgotten.

“She hates me.” Kuroba moans after a moment. “I screwed up and she knows and she’ll never talk to me again and she hates me.”

“Kuroba-kun, I’m sure she doesn’t _hate_ you—”

“She _hates me_ ,” Kuroba repeats, this time with emphasis. “And I can’t blame her. If I was her, I’d hate me. Hell, _as me_ , I already hate me.”

That’s…not the most assuring thing for Saguru to hear. It’s not something Saguru ever expected to hear from Kuroba, really, but right now he’s drunk and being incredibly honest, and it’s as terrifying as it is illuminating. It’s definitely better to have it all out in the open rather than bottled up behind that damned poker face, but it’s also disheartening to see Kuroba so distraught.

“Oh hey, Hakuba,” Kuroba grumbles, managing to force his head off the table and meet Saguru’s gaze. “Does the inspector know she’s safe?”

“Ah, yes. Koizumi-san actually spoke with him directly over the phone.” Saguru winces just remembering the volume and duration with which Nakamori shouted into the receiver. “He’s not exactly happy that Aoko-kun’s shut herself away with Koizumi-san, but at least he’s no longer running himself into the ground with worry.”

“That’s good.” Kuroba breathes a sigh of relief. Good to see he really does care for the inspector, despite the horrors he’s probably wreaked on Nakamori’s blood pressure during all those heists.

“He’s also still trying to understand _why_ Aoko-kun ran away in the first place, and…I believe he’s caught on to the fact that it had something to do with you.” Saguru bites his lip as he recalls what he overheard of the inspector’s grumbling. “He’s been pondering theories. Last I checked, he was seriously considering that you might have gotten her pregnant.”

“Haaaa,” Kuroba scoffs. “I _wish_.”

Saguru quirks a brow at that. He never detected that anything had been actually consummated between Kuroba and Aoko, but even though the romantic tension had clearly been there since before Saguru ever came into the picture, fully deciphering interpersonal relationships has never been his strong point. Maybe this would be a bad time to really bring it up, but…

“Did you two ever actually…?” Saguru can’t bring himself to finish the sentence. Just imagining it makes him suddenly fidgety in his own seat.

“No,” Kuroba mutters. “I mean, I’ve dreamt about it, yeah, and I think maybe she did too, but nothing ever actually happened. No kissing, no dating, no anything else.” He snatches his glass up and swirls it, eyes locked onto the amber pool. “And nothing ever will happen now that she hates me forever, so if you wanna make _your_ move on her…”

Saguru flusters at having his own crush brought up. Sure, Aoko was absolutely his type when they first met, and honestly still is, but he wouldn’t try to strike. Not now, not like this.

Besides…

Kuroba tilts his head back to chug the wine, and Saguru watches his Adam’s Apple bob, displacing the dim light as it shines over the pale skin of his throat. The last drop slides past parted lips and Kuroba licks them as he sets his glass back down, his cheeks flushing pink and his head hanging limply from his neck. An increasingly familiar yet always vexing tingle of warmth sprouts in Saguru’s chest at the sight—but it abruptly gives way to white-hot anger when Kuroba reaches for the bottle again.

“That’s enough.” Saguru grabs the bottle first, this time making sure to tighten his grip so that Kuroba won’t be able to get it back. Kuroba gazes at him with a lidded, almost _bewildered_ gaze, and that just makes Saguru angrier.

“Fine, yes Kuroba, you hurt her!” Saguru snaps, voice rising to a reprimanding shout. Kuroba actually physically flinches—to hell with poker face when you’re inebriated, apparently—so Saguru lowers his volume, but he remains firmly stern and solemn. “Honestly, we all did. But after spending this much time with the both of you, one thing I know for certain is that Aoko-kun could _never_ hate you. She loves you, and she _will_ come back to you, and if you give a single good goddamn about how she feels, you will at least _try_ to fix this when she does.”

It won’t be easy. Broken trust isn’t something you can just fix. But Saguru won’t let Kuroba give up on making amends before he even tries.

Silence hovers over them, their eye contact endures for what feels like ages—until finally, Kuroba breaks both. “Thanks,” he mumbles, scratching his cheek as he glances to the side. “I needed to hear that.”

“Don’t thank me for the truth.”

Perhaps that was too stiff of a reply, because it makes Kuroba instantly burst into giggles: tipsy and somehow _off_ , tones a haunting refrain of the usual playful staccato. Deft hands aim for the bottle again, but either the alcohol’s finally started inhibiting Kuroba’s reflexes or he’s not actually trying all that hard, because he doesn’t get anywhere close. In the end, Kuroba gives up, his whole form plopping down so that he’s more or less draped over Saguru’s chest.

“Yanno, you dropped the ‘-kun’ just then,” Kuroba laughs, and it takes Saguru a moment to realize that indeed he did.

“A slip of the tongue.” Saguru flushes, both at his previous lapse in appellation and at their current, rather intimate position. “If I’m lucky, you’ll forget that in the morning.” Not likely.

“Heh,” Kuroba slurs, hands slinking around to grasp Saguru’s shoulders, face inching ever closer. “Yeah. It’d be great to forget.”

He’s not talking about the name thing, Saguru realizes too late.

Kuroba leans up and kisses him, and then all Saguru knows is the too-sweet taste of cheap chardonnay and the sloppy movements of a warm, wet mouth pressed up against his own. In an instant, Saguru forgets all sense. He aches to hold Kuroba in his arms, aches to yank Kuroba in until their bodies are flush against each other, aches to part his lips and open up to let Kuroba have anything and everything because when Saguru’s eyes flutter shut he sees stars and Christ that is _amazing_ —

Glass shatters and Saguru’s eyes fly open at the sound, his hands that were halfway to the point of embracing Kuroba abruptly shifting to shove him away instead. Kuroba lands roughly in his chair, and Saguru instantly feels bad, but then, he also would have felt bad if he’d let that kiss go on. They both turn to stare at the bottle that slipped from Saguru’s grasp, now reduced to shards on the floor, with the wine splashed over the tiles in streaked puddles of pale gold.

“Shit,” Kuroba gasps, and when Saguru locks gazes with him, the haze over his eyes has cleared, as if he’s been sobered up by what he just did. “Shit, Hakuba, I’m sorry, that…that wasn’t…”

Saguru shakes his head, hating the way his face burns hot with shame, hating the way his heart still flutters even as it sinks into his churning stomach. “It’s fine,” he forces out. “You’re drunk and it was just a mistake. I get it.”

“N-No, I…!” Kuroba flops down, banging his head on the countertop. “Aw, fuck. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_. I’m so sorry, I’m treating you like a rebound to Aoko and you don’t deserve that.”

“I said it’s fine. Don’t mention it.” Seriously, don’t, or Saguru might just up and leave from how much he can’t handle this conversation.

“But it’s not like that—!” Kuroba curses again, fisting a hand in his own hair as he looks back up. “Okay, the way I did it was shitty, but I…I don’t want you to think I didn’t mean it.”

Saguru quickly clears his throat, smothering his instinctual noise of surprise, because Kuroba couldn’t possibly mean that the way Saguru wants him to. “You just said Aoko-kun—”

“It’s both of you, okay?! It’s been both of you for a while now!” Kuroba’s shout carries through the empty bar, ringing in Saguru’s ears and lingering like an aftershock as Kuroba buries his face in his hands.

Oh god. Kuroba’s serious.

That realization makes Saguru freeze up, and whatever words he was going to say dry up and die on his tongue. It’s all just so unreal, too convenient to be true. Saguru came to terms with his bisexuality when he was twelve, and he’s been dealing with the fact that _both_ Aoko and Kuroba are so completely his type ever since he officially became their friend. So if Kuroba’s really suggesting what Saguru thinks he’s suggesting right now…

“No,” Saguru decides, and pries Kuroba’s hands from his face to reestablish eye contact. “No, we are not doing this right now. Whatever… _this_ is, we’re going to discuss it at length, at a time when you’re not drunk and I’m not exhausted.” Saguru pointedly delivers a tight squeeze to the hands held in his own. “And…preferably with Aoko-kun present as well.”

“Heh.” Kuroba’s smile is clearly forced, gut-wrenchingly sad, and Saguru has to slam down the tiny, traitorous voice in his head that urges him to take his words back, to kiss Kuroba again, and to not stop until these disastrous past few days become the very furthest thing from their minds. “Fair enough, I guess.”

Saguru nods and gestures to the mess on the floor. “I’ll clean this up, then I’ll take you home. Tomorrow, we’ll apologize to Konosuke-san and pay for what you stole.”

“I told you, it’s not stealing if I _intend_ to pay for it,” Kuroba groans, but his protest is only halfhearted at best.

Saguru rolls his eyes and smiles. “Whatever you say, Kuroba.”

This time when he drops the honorific, it’s intentional.


End file.
